


Lightning McQueen Saves the Zoo

by rambleraptor



Category: Cars (Pixar Movies), Putt-Putt (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:41:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23843188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rambleraptor/pseuds/rambleraptor
Summary: Mater starts a zoo. But, one of the animals needs help or the zoo can't open in time! Lightning and Sally to the rescue!
Relationships: Sally Carrera/Lightning McQueen, Tow Mater/Lightning McQueen
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Lightning McQueen Saves the Zoo

A lifetime of early laps had conditioned Lightning McQueen to wake up just as the sun crested the horizon. He stretched himself out, contorting his frame to avoid hitting the slim walls of the cone. It was past time for him to move out of Sally's hotel room, but he had grown used to the cone. It was cozy, the tight walls reminding him of his days on the road.

The morning sunlight began to trickle in through the window and shined off Lightning's faded 95 emblem. The room began to glow a muted red from the reflection of his once-illustrious red coat. 

Lightning glanced outside and smiled. He loved the way Radiator Springs looked in the morning. Main Street was still dark as the night sky. The hot sun and the occasional lost tourist hasn't worn down the best accident Lightning had ever had. The neon over at Flo's Cafe still had an occasional hum, as the sun had just given the night lights its daily reprieve. 

Lightning loved this part of the morning. The faded brick and cement sidewalks amplified the desert sun and washed out all of town's beauty. This was the only time of the day where you could read the individual cracks in the buildings and see the last remnants of color in walls. Radiator Springs certainly didn't have the tall glass towers, the bright lights, or the wide streets of Los Angeles. Lightning enjoyed the moment when his gas fumes dissipated in the blue sky.

"Stickers! Stickers!"

But, it didn't have a certain blue Porsche. 

"Stickers! Stickers! Get up!"

"I'm coming, Sal!" Lightning groaned as he watched the garage door rise before him.

"Lightning! You told me that you'd get ready for the big day today! Look at you..." Sally said.

Lightning's eyes were still crusted over with oil from his sleep. His axles were tight from a deep sleep in the small room.

"I mean, is it really a big day?" Lightning asked.

"It's the biggest day of your life!" Sally said with a goofy grin. Her big blue eyes were wide with excitement.  
"I'm a multiple time award-winning race car who's driven in races watched by millions of people." Lightning chimed in with a sarcastic grin. "Also, I think I was involved in stopping an eco-terrorist from blowing up London. Maybe. Was I drugged in Eur-"

"Today is so much more important," Sally interrupted trying her best to avoid chuckling.

"Where did Mater find the animals for his zoo anyways?" Lightning asked as he shook his chassis from side to side to wake himself up.

"I think you might need to expand your idea of what an animal is." Sally responded as she motioned for Lightning to leave the cone.

"I love Mater more than anything. But, if he shows me one more coloring book…" Lightning said with equal parts exasperation and humor.

"It's really hard to use crayons with nothing more than a tow hook. It's pretty impressive that he keeps the color in the lines."

Lightning wheeled out of the cone. "You know, we could be a little late," Lightning said as he tapped Sally's rear bumper.

"Get your mind out of the pit stop," Sally said with a sly grin. "Mater's really excited and we shouldn't be late."

\---

Lightning and Sally drove down the town main street as they left Radiator Springs and ventured into the desert. 

A couple miles out of town, they saw a cardboard sign on the sign of the road. "Exotic Animals: 1 mile" was scribbled on it in red crayon. Lightning chuckled.

Another sign saying "Meet the Outback King: 1 mile" followed.

"Biggest Zoo on Route 66: 1 mile"

"Route 66's greatest mystery: 1/2 mile".

Lightning and Sally laughed as they saw a trail of cardboard signs trail off into the horizon.

"I swear, when Mater puts his mind to something, nothing stops him from acting." Sally said. 

"We really should help him get a girlfriend," Lightning said. "He, uh, might have some spare time on his hands."

"He did have a girlfriend! He dated that flying purple spy car, remember" Sally said.

"If I hallucinated that whole period of my life, you'd tell me, right?" Lightning asked.

"Only if it stopped being funny." Sally responded, as she pointed out the entrance to the zoo.

Lightning realized that the rock formation in the distance wasn't actually rock. It had looked like rock from the far distance, but now that he was closer, he realized he was staring at the beginnings of a fortress. Walls of tires, rusted metal scraps, desert rocks and duct tape had been assembled into a massive gateway flanking a door on both sides. 

In front of Lightning and Sally stood a patchwork of plywood costuming as a doorway. The word ZOO was written out in duct tape. The letters were hardened and jagged; the tape unwilling to bend to the imagination of the user. Crude crayon drawings of elephants, monkeys, and dinosaurs filled the rest of the door.

"How long has Mater been working on this?" Lightning wondered out loud.

"Is Mr. Hot-Shot-Race-Car impressed by the small town zoo?" Sally said.

Lightning stuck out his tongue.

"Open up Mater!" Sally shouted over the wall.

Nothing.

"Open up Mater!" Lightning shouted.

Tumbleweeds.

"Mater!" the two of them shouted in unison.

"That's not my name," said a voice from the other side of the gates. 

"Tow Mater…" Lightning responded, eyes rolling deep into his carburetor. 

The gates opened in unison, clearly propelled by a motor. Their heft reverberated throughout the quiet desert air. Lightning could help but be confused by this place. Mater built this place from unpainted plywood, yet there was electrical engineering involved. 

A rusted tow truck emerged wearing an oversized safari hat. He veered through the entrance, side skirting corners, drunk off the excitement. 

"Mater, what are you wearing?" Lightning asked laughing, referring to the large cowboy hat that was blocking most of Mater's field of view.

"Outback Mater now!" Mater insisted. "That's why I'm wearing this here hat. I'm a gen-u-ine zoo-keeper car now"

"We're ready to see the zoo!" Sally said, putting on her best elementary teacher voice, honed from years of living down the road from the salvage yard. 

"You can't Miss Sally. There is no zoo! There's nothin' here. Go away!" Mater said with worry as he tried to splay his body across the zoo entrance to hide it. 

"You've been working on this forever." Lightning insisted. "There were saws and paint and loud noises in the middle of the night."

"I might've had a problem with them there animals." Mater quietly admitted. 

"Sand rabbits fell apart?" Lightning joked. Sally ribbed him.

"Well, the zebroni is stuck and the jalopy made bail." Mater said casually.

"Just push the zebroni." Sally said. "Easy enough."

"It's a zebroni!" Mater insistied. "It's bigger than y'all of us put together."

"Wait, Mater, do you have a real zebroni." Lightning asked.

"Yep!" Mater gleamed.

"They're...endangered...how...but…" Sally's mouth hung open in shock.

Lightning burst into laughter.

"It's illegal!" Sally exclaimed.

"I'm excited to be an accomplice. Never been on a crime spree before. Thanks for bringing me Sally!" Lightning said in between his laughs.

"Let's go save the zoo." Sally said exaspirated.  
"Yay!" Mater burst into song "Welcome to the zoo! With no kagaroos! Tigers killed my mood. Welcome to the zoo zoo zoo! Welcome…"

"Does he still know we're here?" Lightning asked as he watched Mater break into a dance routine.

"I swear, I have more potential legal cases here than I did as a real lawyer," Sally said with a smile. "Let's go save the zoo"

\---

The zoo was a large stretch of desert that extended beyond the crude wooden gates. Outsiders would see tumbleweeds, desert and the same horizon that defined the hundreds of surrounding miles. Mater saw something else entirely.

"Over here, we have the concession stand," Mater said pointing to an old RV with its roof ripped off.

"Where's the…" Sally started

"- what kind of food are you serving?" Lightning asked with a gleam.

"Well, I asked Filmore to serve some of his natur-elle fuel and he told me that he needed a retainer. I don't know any dentists, so I have no food right now!"

Mater had been taking spare parts from the dump for months to build this masterpiece. He built crude outlines of cages using random junk. 

"This is where the birds will be!" Mater said as he motioned towards a chunk of desert boxed in by an assortment of rusted radiators and blown out tires. "Just haven't gotten em yet."

They continued down the stretch of compacted sand as they continued down the zoo. It was clear that Mater had driven over this stretch of desert many, many times until it was worn down enough to stand out as a path.

"I'm gonna put the greenhouse over here!" Mater said. "Just need to get me a house...and some green."

Sally sighed. "Mater, where's the zamboni!!!" Her usual flaccid endorsement of Mater's crazy schemes was quickly turning into frustration at his childish games.

"Miss Sally, if I made som flyers, could I put them in yer lobby?" Mater asked with a aww-shucks grin that Sally had responded to so many times before.

"I...maybe...why don't we talk about this later?" Sally said dismissively. 

The two of them continued down the road. The neatly organized piles of trash were stacked in perfect precision. Old tires were individually turned, their holes and patches rotated away from the guest view. From a hundred yards away, the entire zoo looked a lot like Mater's salvage yard but with its quaint chaos replaced with sweeping vistas, wide piles, and less smells. 

Lightning and Sally exchanged quiet looks. Mater's tour filled the quiet air that was previously taken by the occasional flap of crow's feet and faint echoes of cars headed towards Radiator Springs.

"I put the main attraction all the way at the end!" Mater said with pride. "Wanted to let all the guests admire the scenery before they saw the big animal!"

"There it is!" Sally said as she rushed ahead of all of them.

When Lightning and Mater finally reached her, she was laughing from exhaustion.

In the middle of a mud pit sat a large chisled rock painted black and white.

\---

"Look at er! We gotta get her out of the mud," Mater exclaimed with the eyes of a mother watching her child suffer.

Mater and Sally sat incredulously, the sun cresting over the horizon. Their silence spoke louder than Mater's cries. 

"I kept trying to haul her out with my tow cable, but she does haven't a tow hitch. I was worried about hurting er!"

"It's a really nice sculpture," Sally finally pushed out. 

Mater had done a nice job. He had cracked holes for eyes and carved out some indentations to give the illusion of tracks. The blue eyes juxtaposed well with the grey tracks and the black and white stripes gave the proper zambroni vibe. The crayon smile was a little preschool for an artist of Mater's calibur.

"That's not a sculpture! That's a gen-u-ine zambroni. I've been raisin him for months. Practically my own child." Mater gleamed, more like a farmer at the state fair than a proud parent.

"You gotta be kidding me, Mater. It's a rock. It's an art project." Sally insisted with a tinge of annoyance. 

Lightning motioned towards Sally who couldn't make eye contact with either of them. He wheeled up towards Mater.

"Remember that one night that you swore you were abducted by aliens? You said a UFO swooped you off the ground and then popped you right back in a field with a big crop circle" Lightning started.

"Yeah, I remember," Mater said, his eyes darting towards his front tires to avoid Lightning's gaze.  
"You came rushing to find me and nearly made a whole in the cone door trying to wake me up. The two of us spent hours trying to find that field again. The sun came up and we finally gave up."

"Plus, that there tractor tried to kill us again," Mater interjected.

"Yeah, the tractor tried to eat us for trespassing," Lightning chuckled. "I think we both decided that the whole thing was just...different than you might've thought."

Lightning paused and sighed. 

"Why did you want to start the zoo, Mater? You don't have any animals, the cages are just made of stuff from the dump, there's...nothing here." Lightning went uncharacteristically cold. He tried to snuggle himself next to Mater to comfort him, but Mater kept inch-wheeling away.

"I'll get some animals. Just gonna take some time. Gotta have room for them animals once I get em," Mater responded coldly.

"But, Mater, why bother having this zoo? Why do you want to do all of this now?"

"I, uh...it'll be better soon, I prom-"

"Mater, this zoo is a joke! Your zambroni is a painted rock! This is dumb and childish," Sally screamed, unable to mute her frustration. Her headlights were red from embarrassment.

Mater's eyes went low and his body drooped. "I just wanted to be important. Like you Miss Sally. And Lightning. You've got a hotel and Luigi's got a tire shop and Lightning's a race car and Flo has a restaurant. I just wanted to be important like all of you."

And he sped off away from his zoo. A soft cry echoed through the empty desert and the zoo stood quiet with regret.

\---

The sun was soon to set as the earth began to cool from its unending heat. Lightning rolled up to Mater's salvage yard.

"Hey Mater, you around?" Lightning asked as he approached a rusted, closed gate. Despite the missing links and rusted edges, Lightning knew from past experience that the gate was solid. Mater took his job as salvage yard jail captain just serious enough to make sure the front door worked.

"Come out Mater!"

"No car's home," came a twangy voice from the other side.

"C'mon Mater, can you let me in?"

The rusty gate slowly opened and Mater emerged. His face held the same expression it did hours ago.

"Just go away, Lightnin. I don't want to have you around right now." Lightning had never heard Mater say that before.

"I wanna show you something Mater. Before the sun sets." Lightning said as he motioned for his friend to follow.

"I don't care," Mater said, stoic and unmoving.

"I think I've got something that will make you feel better. If I can't change your mind, I'll go find that tractor and give her a sporty snack."

Mater didn't flinch.

"Mater, it's an emergency! We need you to save the world and you have to come with me right now!"

Mater began to slowly back his way into the yard.

"Mater, as a knight of the Queen - you are a knight right? That happened? - as a knight, the Queen demands that you follow me!"

Mater still inched back to his cocoon. 

Lightning drove behind Mater and started to push. Lightning's wheels started spinning to their max rotations, rubber smoke filling the air and clogging Lightning's catalytic converter. His engine whirred, whining as if he approached the 500th lap. Nothing. He couldn't move Mater.

"You've. got. to. come. with. me!" Lightning insisted through his huffs, completely unable to budge Mater. A low center gravity and a lot of heft. That's what made Mater such an effective tow-truck.

"Fine, where we going?" Mater asked, exhausted.

"The zoo."

\---

The two of them drove down the long road towards the zoo. The setting sun had turned the reddish hues of the desert to blues and blacks. Lightning and Mater's banter filled the desert with noise and activity, but their silence was even louder.

Lightning opened the gates and motioned Mater in. Mater couldn't take his eyes off the ground, couldn't face what he had built.

"Look up, Mater."

Mater looked up and saw the whole town in front of him. Sally, Flo, Luigi, Filmore, Ramone, Flo, Guido, and Lizzie all stood in the road. The zambroni stood next to them, retrieved from the mud pile and wiped down like a trophy.

"I'm sorry Mater. I didn't mean any of that. You are important. And if you want to build a zoo...a real zoo, then we all want to help," Sally said.

"I am going to build you brand new tire cages!" Luigi said with pride.

"I'll get you the best concessions this side of the Mississippi," Flo said next.

"I think you're using the husk of my third cousin to sell concessions," Lizzie crowed in her usual way that conveyed neither her audience or her meaning.

"We're gonna get some radical art up in here," came Ramone.

"And some far-out drinks," said Filmore.

Mater beamed, his front red from embarrassment. "Aww shucks, thanks y'all."

"You're family, Outback Mater," Sally said with a wink as she handed Mater his hat. "We'll always be looking out for you."

Mater looked at Lightning. "Guess you done did save the zoo after y'all"

"Ka-chow!"


End file.
